Methods of Using an Imaging Apparatus in Augmented Reality, in Medical Imaging and Nonmedical Imaging

1. An augmented or virtual reality method of wound imaging and reconstruction, comprising: operating an imaging device to acquire a 3D image of a wound that is real; producing a depth image from the 3D image; detecting a wound from the depth image, including producing a preliminary wound boundary formed of pixels, producing a final wound boundary from the preliminary wound boundary, including, for each pixel in the preliminary wound boundary, searching for a maximum value of a directional second derivative of the depth image along a direction orthogonal to the preliminary wound boundary, setting a pixel of the final wound boundary to coordinates corresponding with the maximum value, subject to a size control function to avoid breaking continuity of the final wound boundary; and using the final wound boundary, performing at least one augmented reality processing step, virtual reality processing step, authentic reality processing step, or mixed reality processing step, wherein the step is performed by a computer or a processor.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the operating step comprises imaging a human patient.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the operating step comprises imaging a real animal.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the real animal is selected from the group consisting of: a farm animal; a household pet; a zoo animal.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the operating step is performed to image a patient in a first geographic location, and wherein the 3D image is simultaneously accessible to both a first medical professional in a second geographic location and a second medical professional in a third geographic location, wherein the first geographic location, second geographic location, and third geographic location are remote from each other.

6. The method of claim 1 , comprising a step of solving a Laplace equation with Dirichlet boundary conditions.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the method steps exclude any RGB data processing having been performed and without any other color-information data processing having been performed.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising constructing a virtual skin surface using the acquired 3D image using capping or an interpolation method on a 2-dimensional grid.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising calculating a measurement from the final wound boundary.

10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: generating a Z-buffer, wherein the depth image is produced by a conversion of the Z-buffer; defining a region of interest U for the wound detection step.